Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That was one of the issues I was going to raise. The officials need to sit down with the stakeholders immediately - not next month or next year - to see whether something can be done to work out an agreement between the stakeholders. We need to consider the interpretation of the European rule. Ireland always has to go ten steps more than everyone else. Someone who spoke earlier was quite correct. In France and other European countries the way they interpret European regulations is different from how we do it. It is a bit like the lockdown. We have to go ten steps ahead of everyone else.

I will offer one example and finish at that. Many years ago, the Department made a decision that it wanted small abattoirs closed, and it succeeded. The Department paid the local authorities to have vets. All it did was break the hearts of small employers in the country. The Department destroyed them. Every time a vet came in, it would cost them so much that they had to get out of business.

What did we see last year? I am not a farmer. We have seen what the bigger factories have done during the past 20 years. They are now controlling the price of beef and the price of food. The same thing will happen here if we do not have competition in the market. What will we do? The vets will be signing the documentation and they will be selling it in the same place. That is not on.

This is my final point. The Department is not able to control what it has to control. It is now going to create another problem. How will the Department control medicine coming in from Northern Ireland that is being sold by people who are already selling illegal goods in this country? The Department will hound the farmers and the chemists but will allow the people who are bringing this medicine in to continue. It is a like what I said earlier about cigarettes. The authorities get thousands of cigarettes coming into the country every week, but they are only the ones seized. Others are being brought in all the time. How is the Department going to control that? Is Europe putting the pressure on the Department or is the Department putting the pressure on?